Suggestion: option: Free to play, with a twist.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

Hey all you uhall hogging people, debating with a friend here for fun if it would be valid to have some sort of free to play business plan for ultima.

Gilmour: UO should be free to play tbh.
Stephen: YES, id have 100 houses then.

well obviously this wouldnt work, so first restriction would be:

Restriction: pay to own a house monthly.

so far we got the following idea.

Free account restrictions:
700 skill points (no getting veteran rewards, see next line)
No veteran Rewards, although months will tick still, but cannot claim or use any.
No housing although you can be coowner(?).

in other words you could call it a trial that never ends.

else account would be like normal standard account. pay for every expansion, and spend your allowance in the uogamecode store.

for the ones that do wish housing and the other perks they need to pay a sub like is currently.

the goal of this would ofc be to get more people either onto or back onto ultima. and the extra cost of the freebies would be covered by the goodies on uogamecodes.com

personally i got no beef paying for a subscription whatsoever, i only would like to see uo return to see some of its glory days.

please welcome my suggestion, you are of course welcome to comment what you wish, it is only a suggestion, but myself thinks its a pretty good and reasonable one.

Stratics VeteranAlumniStratics Legend

I agree UO at thsi stage should be FTP but we all know they wont got hat way. The Devs said on the Warhammer Online forums they discussed it but it wasnt going to happen for War so i doubt it will here. Nice dream though.

Stratics VeteranAlumniStratics Legend

Yeah but I have a paid sub for Warhammer. I like all tiers of the game. Endless trial is just for Tier 1 with limits. Which they could do with UO if they wanted. The good thing is if your enemies you cant trash talk each other in the game. Just gestures. lol

Actually I also play from time to time a FTP game. I truly dont deal with annoying kids as you would think. 3 million player base and truly no drama. You do your thing and if you get into a fight you fight. No drama.

•Trial Accounts have the following resource restrictions -
•Will only receive basic ores and logs (iron, plain logs) even if they'd otherwise qualify for better types
•Will not receive sand or stone when mining

•Trial Account Misc. restrictions -
•Will not receive ML rewards for resource gathering (jewels, ingredients, and white pearls while fishing)
•Will not receive rewards, monster kill points, or virtue points from champ spawns
•Will not get scrolls while doing champ spawns
•Will not gain Justice virtue points for killing murderers
•Cannot use Valor or Justice virtues
•Cannot Protect or be Protected by another player
•Can not join factions or faction aligned guilds
•If in a guild they will be removed from the guild, if their guild joins a faction
•Cannot use Scrolls of Alacrity, Power Scrolls, Stat Scrolls, or Scrolls of Transcendence
•Cannot use Commodity Deeds
•Cannot do Community Collections
•Cannot use Soulstones or fragment soulstones
•Cannot use Pet summoning balls
•Cannot use Bracelets of Binding
•Cannot use the Bag of Sending
•Cannot do any repeatable quests – even if they are normally repeatable
•Cannot acquire BOD’s

someone said that the immature players will change the atmosphere of the game.Might I ask how would the atmoshpere change?Like we have some in-depth gaming here or somtin?

Click to expand...

I'll pretend that's a serious question...
Paying a subscription generally goes hand-in-hand with a sense of commitment to the game, and the account.
When there's money invested, people would tend more towards conducting themselves maturely, whereas a persona that pays nothing but the effort to sign up for the account wouldn't have that sense of commitment/investment.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

I think Endless Trial Accounts would work if it went hand in hand with advertising and letting people know the benefits of subscribing (though the housing part should be pretty obviously). Getting new people is a good thing. Sure, many of them might suck, but we all might make a few nice friends along the way which can only be a good thing.

Stratics VeteranAlumni

In honestly, when I see a F2P which is grossly restrictive I don't touch it. It's not F2P, it's a trial and I don't see any appeal in that model as a player. At least not when it's marketed as F2P.

F2P works best IMHO if the game is fully free with optional purchase extras or booster packs which you do pay for. If your entire F2P experience is a series of dangled carrots of "if you were subscribing, you could go here, use this" etc, it's really a trial. It would annoy the heck out of a player who tried to stay F2P all the time.

Rather than a really restricted trial dressed in F2P clothing, I'd rather they just dropped the subscription costs to something more tempting. If the sub is "just a few quid/dollars" the chances are that existing players aren't going to care about that expenditure each month. Even if they're trying to save money, it's not a big amount so it'll probably mean the accounts are kept open. And likewise as a new player, a cheap subscription is really appealing. It means you can run a few subscription games all the time and dip in when you like. Rather than cancelling for a month to play something else instead.

I would really love a proper F2P model for UO, having paid a few games like that before. I don't find the players any more objectionable than those already in UO, actually I've never had a problem in a F2P game tbh. The benefits of a much larger game population would outweigh that issue anyway. If the UO shop had a steady supply of cool but not essential items and things like tshirts, cloth maps, models...the stuff players have requested for years, those of us who are UO crazy with cash to burn could do so. Those players who have a very tight gaming budget could still enjoy UO and perhaps use their game gold to trade for items and codes instead. Even if the sub price was reduced gradually to ensure the game remained on a good footing financially. I think right now a reduced sub would go down well with the players.

I was unaware of the changes made to Trial Account Misc. restrictions, excellent!
Except for unattended scripts, (which i think they're already dealing with as well), Looks like they made, and instituted some well thought out decisions for a change, imho

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

tbh i seriously ment LIKE a seious trial, i still think the endless part should only be AFTER you buy a registration code to register your account.

i would agree that if there is no money involved to play at all, we might or will get some odd types. but as someone mentioned as long as money involved in some sense ppl tend to care for thier acc. however disagree with that person that it need to be subscription to work.

someone mentioned it should be free for all with booster packs, this can be valid as well, as long as housing and other stuff is a booster pack then IE. but i dont think they would want to downgrade thier subscribers to freebies, thats finally flushing money down the toilet.

I think its time for UO to go F2P. Only restrict access to new content. Give everything up to SA and require payment for upgrades, custom eye candy, name changes, char transfers and all that is currently for sale.

UO desperately needs an influx of players and this is the only way I see it happening.

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